API 3.0 - Beta Has Begun - What does this mean to you?

Hey all, the 3.0 beta API has been distributed to Black Operations, Messer Company, NGA and Breach as of this time today.

Its now time to start talking to the user base about what API 3.0 does, and how it is going to affect the CCS game in total in the near future.

Its been an ongoing dilemma with the CCS weapons market for many years now, as the players have leveled through the game, the weapon development companies attempt to increase their effectiveness to stay competitive within the median average level of the game. In some cases these experiments in staying effective have produced some wildy out of standard weaponry.

Over the last six years the CCS development team has had to work with multiple developers in attempting to get weapons pulled back down to sane damage and effect standards in response to concerns from the player base.

API 3.0 is all about making that entire problem a moot issue from here on out. And while it is going to change the weapons you own and how "powerful" they are, you must understand that these changes will be equal amongst all weapon developers and no weapon developer in the system can develop above the hard coded ceiling in the new API. This means while it seems like weapons you've bought have become "less useful" the point of this API change is to ensure that the weapons stay "effective" without allowing any one weapon in CCS be absolutely dominant in CCS combat over other types of weapons.

This has been a long development process, attempting to come up with a solid solution and answer that is both fair to our partner developers and fair to the players that play CCS and purchase weapons from those developers. But we are now nearing completion and should be rolling over to API 3.0 here soon after we get our beta development feedback from the developers we've shared the beta API package with.

It has always been my belief that weapons should sell based on their quality, not based on what the API does, the API should be that extra kick that makes a weapon that suits a particular users style more attractive to use, and not the sole reason someone uses a specific weapon in total.

API 3.0 achieves this reduction of "enhancement priority" forcing people towards whatever weapon is currently "the best" for damage output and CCS combat dominance and allows all our developers to provide weapons that all function in their own variant and different ways, but are all bound under the same development limitations.

So this isn't exactly a "universal nerf" of all CCS weapons, but a total balance of all CCS weapons and with that we also gain quite a few more things with the new API.

The new API is far more secure than API 2.5, unlike API 2.5, which simply allows objects from approved users to send messages to CCS users, even if that object is illegitmate, nothing in API 3.0 can even talk to CCS without having a valid, database resident profile for the object. So if someone has one of my prims, and is trying to send API commands or dynchan strings with that prim...it simply will not work at all, because that object is not registered with the API system and resident on the CCS database. This means far more security in regards to lack of potential for exploit linked to API usage, so not only are all legitimate weapons becoming more "balanced" the chance for illegitimate objects "cheating" in CCS combat is cut down to nearly impossible.

API 3.0 also internally controls "weapon stacking" by pre-defining how many "hands" or damage sources, are in use, when using a certain type of weapon. If you have two API 3.0 swords equipped, then attempt to attach another API weapon to "stack" the weapon, the API in the 3rd weapon will "know" that you already have two weapons attached, and will auto-detach itself.

So in large part, the new API brings in a new era of legitimate "enhancement" to CCS combat itself. The weapons themselves are "fair" because everyone has to develop under the same limitations. There is no chance for someone to use a rogue API object to "cheat" in CCS combat, and we've completely removed the potential to "stack" API objects to exploit in CCS combat as well.

So thats more or less the "short" version of what API 3.0 is doing and what its going to mean to the player base.

If you'd like to discuss the API or ask questions about it, please feel free to add your thoughts in the API 3.0 Discussion Thread on the forum.